BigCommerce vs. IBM Digital Commerce

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BigCommerce
Score 7.5 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
BigCommerce is a SaaS platform that allows SMBs to develop eCommerce sites. Features include the capabilities to design the storefront, configure products, manage payments, generate traffic, and optimize conversion.
$29.95
per month
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
IBM Digital Commerce is an e-commerce platform that is designed to deliver omni-channel shopping experiences, including mobile, social, and in-store. In June 2019, IBM Digital Commerce was acquired by HCL Technologies.N/A
Pricing
BigCommerceIBM Digital Commerce
Editions & Modules
Standard
$29.95
per month
Plus
$79.95
per month*
Pro
$299.95
per month*
Enterprise
Custom
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BigCommerceIBM Digital Commerce
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details*if paid annually
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BigCommerceIBM Digital Commerce
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
BigCommerceIBM Digital Commerce
Online Storefront
Comparison of Online Storefront features of Product A and Product B
BigCommerce
7.3
417 Ratings
5% below category average
IBM Digital Commerce
7.6
3 Ratings
1% below category average
Product catalog & listings7.8413 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Product management6.9410 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Bulk product upload7.4310 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Branding7.1361 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Mobile storefront7.3401 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Product variations7.3387 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Website integration7.6341 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Visual customization7.4403 Ratings8.03 Ratings
CMS7.0296 Ratings4.02 Ratings
Online Shopping Cart
Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Product A and Product B
BigCommerce
7.4
403 Ratings
2% below category average
IBM Digital Commerce
6.0
3 Ratings
23% below category average
Abandoned cart recovery7.5361 Ratings6.02 Ratings
Checkout user experience7.4398 Ratings6.03 Ratings
Online Payment System
Comparison of Online Payment System features of Product A and Product B
BigCommerce
7.8
399 Ratings
6% below category average
IBM Digital Commerce
6.0
3 Ratings
32% below category average
eCommerce security7.8399 Ratings6.03 Ratings
eCommerce Marketing
Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Product A and Product B
BigCommerce
7.1
404 Ratings
5% below category average
IBM Digital Commerce
7.0
3 Ratings
7% below category average
Promotions & discounts7.3380 Ratings7.03 Ratings
Personalized recommendations6.8316 Ratings7.03 Ratings
SEO7.3375 Ratings7.03 Ratings
eCommerce Business Management
Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Product A and Product B
BigCommerce
7.2
409 Ratings
8% below category average
IBM Digital Commerce
6.2
3 Ratings
23% below category average
Multi-site management7.6185 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Order processing7.1388 Ratings5.03 Ratings
Inventory management7.1344 Ratings6.03 Ratings
Shipping6.9349 Ratings6.03 Ratings
Custom functionality7.4344 Ratings6.03 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BigCommerceIBM Digital Commerce
Small Businesses
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 8.9 out of 10
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
Kentico Xperience
Kentico Xperience
Score 7.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BigCommerceIBM Digital Commerce
Likelihood to Recommend
7.2
(436 ratings)
9.0
(5 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(53 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(26 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(25 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(13 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.7
(342 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BigCommerceIBM Digital Commerce
Likelihood to Recommend
BigCommerce
The ONLY reason we left Volusion was fear that Volusion was going to go out of business and our website/data would all be lost. I feel BigCommerce is lightyears behind Volusion in website/inventory control. In our experience, BigCommerce customer service severely lacks knowledge, at least compared to what we had in our 7-1/2 years with Volusion. There were times Volusion even helped us with stuff BigCommerce could not understand. I just feel sick about moving and that should not be the case. In my opinion, I downgraded heavily for the feeling BigCommerce would not be going out of business. I just feel sick.
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IBM
I think WebSphere Commerce is well suited for customers looking to sell products online that need robustness and scalability as a priority. It provides a complete order cycle out of the box, or you can integrate with your existing order fulfillment. Online shopping models like digital subscriptions or a marketplace are not well suited as it requires a lot of customization
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Pros
BigCommerce
  • SEO - fast loading speeds, helps us rank on Google
  • Product customization - allows us to customize templates to our needs to fit all viable information
  • Integration with other platforms - seamless connection to other properties like Google Ads and Analytics
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IBM
  • Websphere commerce provides efficient contract based pricing. Contract based pricing greatly helps in handling prices for different business
  • Catalog filtering is one other strength of websphere commerce, as it helps to filter the show only those products that the customer is entitled to
  • Extended site model is one other strength of WCS as it greatly helps in having multiple e-commerce sites for different demographics, for branding etc
Read full review
Cons
BigCommerce
  • Better and easier localisation for stores outside the US
  • Speed - it is not the fastest
  • Make sure that third-party theme developers update regularly and use best practice
  • Consider EU and country-specific rules and legal obligations and make customers aware of whether BC is actually fully compliant
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IBM
  • The e-Marketing spots contain content associated with marketing activities to target customer segment - needs some improvement. The algorithm to set up the priority of each of the Web Activity with in eMarketing spot is little bit confusing.
  • The catalog load can be simplified.
  • WebSphere Commerce is a huge application - someone needs to spend at least 5-6 years to learn about the whole application.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
BigCommerce
I personally would not even consider another e-commerce website platform.
Bigcommerce may have the same (or close to the same) functionality and integrations as other SaaS platforms but they excel at customer service and tech support. At the end of the day you need a company that will answer the phone in less than a minute especially if you're having a 5 alarm issue. That said, we hardly ever have any issues. The site was down for a few minutes one time 5 years ago. Sometimes we have issues with coding or apps and they help me with that too. They even walked me through installing our new theme when the contracted developers told me that wasn't included in the development of our new website.
Bigcommerce comes out with new innovations every year, not including apps that other people write for the platform, and there are a lot of those and new ones all the time. And there are a LOT of awesome themes to choose from (Halothemes are the best).
And the price is reasonable!
I'd give Bigcommerce my business any time and recommend them to anyone looking to run an e-commerce website. You could even use them for a non-shopping site, we have one of those too!
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IBM
The scalability and various configurations of the product allows for a wide range of e-commerce site features. It provides a storefront to begin with so it helps with speeding up development.
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Usability
BigCommerce
I think that overall it has a great front end for the customer. On the back end, it takes a little spin-up time, but in just a couple of hours you can really have your head wrapped around everything you're going to need 99% of the time. It takes me about 5 minutes to train a new user on how to interact with customer orders.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
BigCommerce
So far in my time with BigCommerce I have not had any down time when it comes to my webstore or accessing it at any time I need to. Knowing that they have such a good uptime, it makes me feel comfortable that my customers can access things anytime, but also keep sales going 24/7
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Performance
BigCommerce
I have not had any issues with pages loading slow or any real other issues, not that I have encountered so far. Speed of the site and images loading are fantastic and everything just seems to work nicely, which may seem like a simple thing to say about things, but when something just WORKS! Its rather nice vs fighting with things to work right.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
BigCommerce
Because they are always there no matter how simple or complex the question is, if they don't know the answer they don't fake it and just make you go away feeling frustrated.. they get you to someone that does know the answer. I always appreciate their help and their honesty!
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Online Training
BigCommerce
They have a comprehensive online help file system that makes it easy to do almost anything. They cover just about everything you'd want to do with your online store with images, clear descriptions and in some cases video. I will, however, say the videos should be a little more professorially done and not sound like the employees are doing it in their cubical.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
BigCommerce
A certified BigCommerce design and solution partner will usually comprise a team of highly experienced designers, developers and marketers. It is our view that in the vast majority of cases, this will pay dividends in the long-term - especially for those teams that could use the extra support.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
BigCommerce
We switched from Shopify due to the restrictions they implemented on our industry. While we spent tens of thousands of dollars investing in our Shopify store, we can't have them cutting us off anytime they want. We reviewed WooCommerce, but didn't like the storefront or backend. Plus it seems like Wordpress/WooCommerce runs into tons of hacking issues and bugs.
Read full review
IBM
IBM Digital Commerce was a lot more customizable and had a good engine for us to make enhancements. We were not locked down to certain integrations and we were able to utilize a lot of the features outside of the box vs using a prescribed set of features and functionality that other tools would force us to use
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Scalability
BigCommerce
I believe after seeing all of the parts of this platform, one is able to develop the business and keep adding on select features for the business. There are multiple options for purchase with the various platforms once the business grows more. The different features being offered by the platform can lead us to scalability.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
BigCommerce
  • Provides a robust platform to sell a high-risk product.
  • Page Builder saves you time and money by negating the need to buy a template.
  • Includes robust promotion settings that allow for codes and automatic discounts, bulk discounts, and customer groups (i.e. military discount), all native options.
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IBM
  • For our clients in the apparel industry, the flexibility that WCS provides to scale up really helped their online business to grow tremendously.
  • Our client in the restaurant industry can't quite leverage what WCS has to offer though as it doesn't really fit their shopping model.
  • Another positive impact is that it allows our clients to streamline their commerce system in interacting with their backend.
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ScreenShots

BigCommerce Screenshots

Screenshot of Enterprise ecommerce for high-volume brands like Skullcandy.Screenshot of Our industry-leading integration will let you list your products on Amazon directly from the BigCommerce control panel, with centralized inventory and order processing and fulfillment.Screenshot of Easily customize the look and feel of your storefront.